Jarrett Says Obama Wants Overhaul of Tax Code (Transcript)

Sep 4, 2012

Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser
to President Barack Obama, said at a Bloomberg breakfast in
Charlotte, North Carolina that the president would work with the
business community to overhaul the tax code in a second term, as
Democrats today kick off their national convention that aims to
propel his re-election bid.

(This is not a legal transcript. Bloomberg LP cannot
guarantee its accuracy.)

NORMAN PEARLSTINE: Good morning. I’m Norman Pearlstine,
Chief Content Officer for Bloomberg, and welcome to the
Bloomberg Link, our center for the Democratic National
Convention. This is a breakfast meeting that we do each morning
with Bloomberg Insider, the daily publication that we’ve been
producing for both conventions. If you haven’t seen it, please
get a copy on your way out. This is this morning’s edition,
talking about President Obama and environmental issues.

We’re doing this series in collaboration with AT&T, who’s
been a terrific partner for us. And following this morning’s
session, we’ll be talking about a very exciting program that we
shall be doing in collaboration with AT&T. But for now, I’d
really like to turn the program over to my colleague, Susan Goldberg, who is Bloomberg’s Executive Editor for all things
government - federal, state and local. And so, Susan, I turn it
over to you. Thank you.

SUSAN GOLDBERG: Thank you. Good morning, everybody, and
welcome.

Valerie Jarrett has been by the president’s side for almost
every day in the last four years. On Sunday in a front-page
story in the New York Times, a White House official put her role
this way, “She’s the single-most influential person in the
Obama White House.” Ms. Jarrett has known the Obamas for more
than 20 years, when she offered Michelle Obama a job in the
Chicago mayor’s office. Today, she’s both counselor and friend
and an influential participant in the most important policy
decisions of the day and someone who gets to vacation with the
first family.

That same New York Times story said, “She serves as the
president’s protector in chief,” and added, “If Karl Rove was
known as George W. Bush’s political brain, Ms. Jarrett is Mr.
Obama’s spine.” All in all, it’s quite a portfolio and I’m
very pleased to welcome you, Valerie, to the --

VALERIE JARRETT: Thank you, Susan.

GOLDBERG: - Bloomberg Link.

JARRETT: It’s a pleasure to be here with you.

GOLDBERG: Thank you. When the president was elected, he
promised Americans that he could get Washington to change, that
he could get Democrats and Republicans to work together on
common solutions to our problems. But today, the country is as
bitterly divided as any time in the last century.

Of course, you can demonstrate many ways that the
Republicans are partially responsible for this, but, like my mom
used to tell my sister and me, it takes two. What responsibility
does the administration bear for this division and what can
President Obama do to change that?

JARRETT: Well, I’ll tell you, it’s pretty challenging when
the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate says that his
number one objective is to try to make sure that the president
doesn’t get re-elected, and he says that at the beginning of his
term. I think back to the kind of amazing speech that Senator
McCain gave at his concession speech election night, and he
talked about how we should all come together and work together.
And it was a very patriotic speech, and that message ended that
night.

And so yes, we’ve had four tough years where it’s been very
difficult to get the Republicans to the table. But
notwithstanding that, the president has been able to accomplish
a great deal. And I think that part of what this week is about
is to talk about the kind of mess he inherited, what he’s been
able to accomplish, notwithstanding this enormous amount of
division in Washington, and how we’re going to move our country
forward.

And the country doesn’t have to center in Washington. A big
part of what is happening around the country is outside of
Washington, and it is that energy that we’re going to galvanize
this week here in Charlotte.

GOLDBERG: But do you think we’ll continue to hear from the
president about how he wants to work with the Republicans --?

JARRETT: Well, of course.

GOLDBERG: - or has he given up on that?

JARRETT: No, no, he’s never going to give up on that. I
think it’s what the American people expect, is that their
president will always try to engage. And it’s not a Republican
or a Democratic issue, it’s trying to galvanize all of the
elected officials to keep focused not on their short-term
political interest, but on all of you, the American people. And
that’s something that he is as determined to push forward today
as he has ever been.

GOLDBERG: Let me ask you a little bit about the Republican
convention last week and Mr. Romney’s acceptance speech. How did
you react to his statement about the president? And I’ll quote
him, he said, “You know there’s something wrong with the kind
of job he’s done as president when the best feeling you had was
the day you voted for him.” Are voters disappointed in the
president?

JARRETT: I think if Mr. Romney would come here to Charlotte
and hear the kind of energy that’s on the ground right now he
might want to rethink what he said. Look, we’ve been through a
very, very tough four years, the toughest four years, certainly,
in any of our lifetimes, the worst in our country since the
Great Depression. And it took a long time to get into that mess
and it’s going to take a while to dig ourselves out.

But the fact of the matter is if you look at what was
happening in the last four to six months -- the last six months
of the Bush Administration, our country lost 4 million jobs.
Well, you know what? In the last 29 months we’ve had 29
consecutive months of private sector job growth, over 4.5
million jobs. The president invested in the automobile industry
when many said, “Oh, just let it go. Let Detroit go bankrupt.”

Now, not only is GM number one in the country, it’s number
one in the world. Chrysler and Ford are back on top. The workers
are doing well. All of the spin-off industries that depend on
the automobile industry are doing well. The president said he
was going to end the Iraq war; he did. As those folks come back
home, we owe them and their families a level of responsibility.

There’s so much that has changed in the last four years for
the positive, but the fact of the matter is there’s still far
too many Americans who want to work that are having a hard time
finding a job, which is why the president has invested in
education. A lot of that investment pays off over the long-term
because he’s determined to build a middle class that’s strong,
with a core, and it’s built to last, and that doesn’t happen
overnight.

GOLDBERG: You talked for a moment there about energy, and I
did want to ask you about that. There was so much energy
surrounding the president’s election in 2008 and it does feel
really different this time around. How are you going to energize
these voters, these younger voters, to go out and vote? I know
that they are key in a number of the swing states. How are you
going to get them back in the game and what are we going to hear
about this week?

JARRETT: The president has spent a great deal of time just
in the last couple of weeks going on college campuses as
students are going back to school, and the way he has been
received has been very energetic. And he talks about issues that
are important to them.

When I met the president and first lady, it was before they
were married and I was trying, as you said, Susan, to try to
recruit the first lady to come and work in city government. And
part of what they were struggling with is that whether they
could afford for her to join the public sector because of their
combined debt, and their debt was student loan debt.

That’s why the president doubled Pell Grants, that’s why he
fought so hard to get Congress to make sure that the interest
rates on student loans didn’t double. And so he comes at this
from a perspective where he understands what their plight is. He
knows that if you can’t afford college you just can’t ask you
parents for a loan all the time. That doesn’t work.

GOLDBERG: Let me ask you a little bit about the
administration’s relationship with the business community, which
has been rocky at points. If you look at donations by the very
biggest givers - the financial industry - they’ve done a flip-
flop in the last four years. In 2008, the financial industry
contributed more to Mr. Obama; now they are contributing much
more to his challenger, by double, actually. Why is that? And
what is it that the business community doesn’t like about how
the administration is going about things?

JARRETT: I think you have to separate a few on Wall Street
from the rest of the business community. There are a lot of
businesses outside of New York who have a great deal of
confidence in the president, who’ve worked very closely with him
in partnership as we’ve moved our agenda forward, whether it’s
focusing on education and designing a curriculum where the
people who finish our community colleges, for example, have the
skills that they need to compete in a global marketplace. We’ve
have great partnerships there.

I think the fact of the matter is a lot of folks -- a few
folks, I should say, not a lot of folks -- a few folks on Wall
Street really pushed against Dodd-Frank and having rules of the
road in place. And the fact of the matter is we cannot afford to
have the taxpayers of the United States to have to come to the
rescue of the banks again. They resisted that. They spent a lot
of money lobbying against having those rules of the road in
place. They fought against having a consumer financial
protection bureau that’s designed to look out for the consumer.

You have to ask yourself, why did they fight against that?
Well, they didn’t want the regulations, but they needed the
regulations. And so the fact that they’re not providing as much
financial support to us is not nearly as important as the fact
that we still have a robust number of small donors all across
the country. We’d rather have $5.00 from someone who’s making a
sacrifice than the kind of money that you’ve seen go into these
super-PACs on the other side.

GOLDBERG: But if the president is re-elected he will have
the opportunity for a do-over with the business community. What
do you think he’ll do differently?

JARRETT: I think he’s going to continue to engage them. And
let’s face it, many members of the business community have been
suffering through this economy as well. Many of the folks who
depended upon the banks for access to capital saw that capital
dry up, and so they’ve gone through a tough time as well.

I think as our economy grows and as we come out of this
deep hole that was dug long before the president took office,
we’re going to see continued opportunities for partnership.
There is plenty of room for common ground. And we’re going to
look at reforming our tax system, our corporate tax system, and
that’s something that we’re going to do in concert with the
business community.

I think where you see a common ground is let’s broaden the
base, let’s reduce the rate. Well, that means that we’re going
to close some loopholes, but that’s going to benefit the broader
business community. There are plenty of ways that we can work
together.

The long-term, sustainable growth in job creation rests
with the private sector. The president knows that and he knows
that what government’s role is to create and foster an
environment where the private sector can thrive and grow and
certain take risks, but not take the kind of risks where
ultimately the taxpayers shoulder the burden for it.

I think we can reach that balance appropriately. The
president is very confident we can do that.

GOLDBERG: The recession and the very slow recovery have
been particularly tough on the African-American community. The
income drop among African-Americans has been about double that
of whites. The unemployment rate is double that of whites.
African-Americans have been much - hit much harder by
foreclosure. And the president has been criticized by some
members of the Black Caucus for not doing enough specifically to
reach out to poor people, people in need, many of whom are
African-American. Do you think that that would change in the
second term?

JARRETT: I think the president has, in fact, reached out a
great deal. If you had a chance to listen to the speech he gave
just a few weeks ago at the Urban League, he talked how
importantly it is that we have to focus on those who need that
help to get up that ladder for success. Let’s face it, many in
the African-American community were suffering long before this
most recent crisis.

And it begins, of course, with education. That’s why the
president is investing so strongly in education. Job training.
He’s put forth many pieces of legislation that the Republicans
and Congress have rebuffed that would have created, for example,
incentives for businesses to hire those who’ve been long-term
unemployed, to provide training for those who’ve been out of the
workforce for a long time, which also has an impact on women who
may have taken off time from work to raise their children. Well,
we need to make sure that our workforce has the skills that they
need to compete in this global marketplace.

So the president has focused on health care. If you look at
the population that is often more uninsured than anyone else,
it’s African-Americans. The health-care bill is designed to make
affordable health care available for everyone, make sure that
people have the ability to get preventative services without co-
pays from their -- without having to pay their insurance
company’s co-pay so that you can stay in good health, have
primary care available and accessible. That’s something that so
many times in the African-American community, there isn’t access
to primary health care, and so that’s an important part.

And the point is that we are all in this together. The way
our country will thrive, the way it has always thrived, is that
it is a land of opportunity for everyone. And if we level that
playing field, everyone should be able to compete. That’s the
story of the president and the first lady and that’s the story
of so many Americans, and that’s what has always made our
country great.

GOLDBERG: You mentioned the role of women. And women are
obviously critical to the president’s re-election. You’re really
the only woman in the administration in a truly, truly senior
position. Do you think that there need to be more women in high
position in the Obama administration?

JARRETT: Well, actually, if you look in the White House,
two of the president’s three deputy chiefs of staff are women.
His counsel is a woman. He has many women throughout the key
positions in the cabinet, from the secretary of state to the
secretary of homeland security to the secretary of health and
human services to the labor secretary. I could go on --.

GOLDBERG: But it’s not that there aren’t women --.

JARRETT: So he has surrounded himself --.

GOLDBERG: - it’s that I don’t think anybody else is getting
described as being as influential as you are. Do you think there
need to be more women in that circle?

JARRETT: I think if people actually saw the way the
president runs his administration, if you had a peek-hole into
his Cabinet meetings, into his senior staff meetings, you would
see that he is well surrounded by women. This is a man who was
raised by a single mom, who lived with his grandparents, who saw
how his grandmother struggled at her bank trying to get
promotions. He comes into this job with a keen appreciation for
the plight of women and he has spent his life fighting.

That’s why the very first bill he signed was the Lilly
Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. That was no accident. It’s because he
watched what happened with his grandmother. So I think if you
really look behind the scenes and not what the press tends to
focus on, women have him pretty well surrounded.

GOLDBERG: Now, I know that women were a key constituency in
his election in 2008, especially married moms. But in 2010, they
voted Republican. Do you think that the president can get those
voters back? And what is he going to do to get those voters
back?

JARRETT: Of course, I think he can get them back. In 2010,
he wasn’t on the ballot. So now he will be --.

GOLDBERG: No, he wasn’t on the ballot, but they voted
Republican.

JARRETT: This is a presidential race and so we are very
confident that those who supported him before -- women who
supported him before --. Look, he doesn’t look at women as a
special interest group. It’s over half our population. It’s half
our workforce. More women are graduating from college than men.
Far more women are graduating now from graduate school than me,
but yet we still only earn $0.77 on the $1.00. And the president
is determined to level that playing field; think women know
that.

We can just look at the most recent history where you see
what’s going on in the Republican party. And frankly, it looks
like what my mother experienced back in the ’50s. It doesn’t
make any sense. The president believes a woman should have a
right to choose what’s happening with her body -- thank you for
nodding back there. Absolutely. And that’s something that we
shouldn’t even be -- it shouldn’t even be up for discussion
anymore. And the fact that that’s the direction that the
Republican party wants to go, well, that’s backward. And
everybody knows the president intends to move forward.

GOLDBERG: Let me just ask you one last question. I’ve been
reading that the president has been spending a lot of time on
the golf course lately. And if he could have a mulligan on one
aspect of the last four years, what would that be on?

JARRETT: I don’t know what a mulligan is. I don’t play
golf.

GOLDBERG: A mulligan is a do-over. I’m sorry. If he could
have a do-over.

JARRETT: Well, you know what? There isn’t a single thing --
. People always say -- every single day we say to ourselves what
could we have done better? What could we have done more
creatively? And all I can say is that having been in the White
House, having seen how this president has awakened every single
morning thinking about the American people and how to push that
forward, I think what we probably would do over again is in that
first year spend more time outside of Washington with the
American people and telling our story around the country and
really galvanizing the pressure that needed to be put on the
Republicans of Congress, because -- Republicans in Congress,
because, frankly, Susan, they ignored their constituents.

And if we could have energized them more and maybe in that
first year, just the way the president is doing right now,
because his message is resonating broadly and we’re confident
that when people vote their self-interest, if they vote their
self-interest, they vote for him. He is the person who is most
looking out for you -- people who are out there each and every
day, just trying to make ends meet, raise a family, put them
through school, have a good job, have health insurance so you
don’t have to worry about going broke if you’re sick or in an
accident, and retiring with dignity. That’s the American dream
that our president is fighting for.

GOLDBERG: So he feels like he lost some time not being out
there?

JARRETT: He didn’t appreciate, I think, early on how
important it was to tell that story and to continue to keep the
public energized in putting pressure on the Republicans because,
let’s face it, they would not have extended the payroll tax cut
at the beginning of this year if it hadn’t been for you. They
would have not passed legislation that prevented student loans
from double if it had not from you. We have to keep that
pressure up, and that’s what he’s determined to do.

Matt Dowd is one of the country’s best-known political
strategists and commentators. He was chief strategist for George
W. Bush in 2004 and since then has launched an international
communications consultancy. He’s a regular in Good Morning
America and Bloomberg TV and he is now an independent, which is
appropriate because he’s worked both for Dick Gephardt and
George W. Bush. So welcome to Matt.

And Jonathan Alter is a Bloomberg View Columnist. Jonathan
is an award-winning writer who’s spent almost 30 years at
Newsweek, where he was the senior editor, before coming to
Bloomberg. He’s written numerous books, including one about
Franklin Roosevelt. President Obama has talked about reading
that book and applying some of the lessons to the presidency. So
welcome, Jonathan.

Well, let me ask you guys, did you hear anything that
surprised you from Ms. Jarrett about either what the president
was doing or what we can expect this week?

JONATHAN ALTER: In a word, no.

GOLDBERG: OK.

ALTER: She is relentless on message, which is what one
would expect from somebody in her position, as we draw closer to
the election. And I think you saw some of the discipline that
they try to bring to these campaigns into at least some of what
they’ve done in the White House.

I guess the thing that interested me the most was when you
asked the mulligan question, and not just because she wasn’t a
golfer. My last book was about their first year -- President
Obama’s first year in office. I think there is a fair amount of
revisiting that first year is going on as they think not just
about why they’re in this dog fight with Romney, but also what a
second term might be like and this sense that they did not do
enough to mobilize the public.

And for me, the thing I noticed pretty early on, and a
great surprise about Barack Obama, was we expected him to be
this gifted orator, gifted communicator who struggled in
executive leadership because he had no experience. And it turned
out that he got more done than any president since Lyndon
Johnson, as a factual matter if you actually add up significant
bills, but he struggled throughout to communicate and to bring
the public along and have them understand what he’s trying to
do.

GOLDBERG: Well, let me bring you in, Matt. Did that
surprise you, what she said, that he acknowledges that he really
didn’t do enough in that first year?

MATT DOWD: No, it didn’t surprise me. What I’m always, I
guess, surprised at somewhat, but it seems to be becoming
intermittently predictable -- I have great respect for Valerie
and great respect for the president. Everybody always says that
before they’re about to say something negative, “Oh, they’re a
great guy, but” -- is the incapacity, and we’ve seen two
presidents in a row that have a great incapacity to admit
reality at many points in time; that admit a mistake, admit that
maybe something’s went off, admit that they didn’t do the job
they could have, admit some level of humility that maybe they’re
responsible for some of the problems that exist in Washington.

And I think that doesn’t serve them well. Bill Clinton is a
perfect example of a president who had a great capacity to admit
a mistake and then move on and say, “I learned. I’m this. I’ll
do better.” And the American public actually has a great
capacity to forgive and then acknowledge that is somebody admits
a mistake they’re learning in office and they’re holding
themselves accountable.

And, as I said, we’ve had two presidents -- one I worked
for and one I’ve actually, and some people know this, who has
actually called me. President Obama has called me up and had me
come to the White House after the 2010 midterms and have a
conversation about what I thought went wrong or what I thought
went right or whatever. But I think that doesn’t serve them
well.

I think at some point -- I would hope in this course of
this convention you’re going to see some level of humility,
you’re going to see some level of, “OK, we didn’t do everything
right. We are looking forward. There were some mistakes made. We
can do better and this is what we’re going to do in a forward-
looking agenda.”

But the bubble, combined with the type of people that run
for office, at some point you have to take responsibility for
the polarization in Washington. Yes, Mitch McConnell said what
he said. Yes, the Republicans did what they did. But you only
work for one person; you work for the President of the United
States. And I think it would strain anybody’s credibility to say
they did everything possible to meet with the Republicans, to
move the Republicans along, to force the Republicans or to get
the Republicans on board. I just don’t think they did everything
they could have.

ALTER: I actually don’t agree with that. They didn’t do
absolutely everything they could, but I took a really close look
-- maybe too close -- at late 2008 in the -- at the end of the
transition and then early 2009. And one of the kind of pivotal
events that comes to light is that the president actually went
to Capitol Hill to meet with just Republicans in the second week
of his presidency to try to get them to join him on saving the
country from a depression, the way a number of Democrats joined
President Reagan in 1981.

And they were all over cable TV talking about sodding the
mall and other things that were wasting money that many of which
actually weren’t in the stimulus. Some of them were there was
some dopey stuff that Nancy Pelosi put in. And the president
said to these guys, “Look, I’ll take out anything that you
think is stupid or wasteful or not helpful. I put in $300
billion in tax cuts, which you should like. I’m not going to
actually reduce tax rates because we just had an election that
sort of decided that.”

But he was very willing to negotiate with them. And John
Boehner and the others decided beforehand, they told the caucus,
“No negotiation. The only way we can come back into power,”
and this is in Robert Draper’s book, they had a meeting on the
night of the inauguration, key Republicans, including Paul Ryan
-- “The only way we can come back into power is complete
obstruction.”

So it’s not like there’s enough blame to go around. There’s
some blame for Obama, sure, but the bulk of the blame is on the
Republican side.

DOWD: Well, I think it’s a question of how shared it is.
And I know we don’t want to do this.

GOLDBERG: We don’t.

DOWD: When you meet with the Republicans and they come up
with ideas and the response you say is, “I won.” And then,
you push the most divisive issue through Congress in the most
divisive manner, which was health care, at a time basically you
say, “We’re going to bring the country together,” and you do
it in the most divisive way with an issue that is incredibly
divisive.

Now, there was aspects -- I am not taking any
accountability away from Republicans, an ability to come to the
table and do that. But in the end, he went, I think, 15 or 16
months without ever having a meeting -- without ever having a
meeting with the Republicans. And he would do along the way
photo ops -- his golf game with Boehner was a photo op. There
was photo ops done along the way, Jonathan.

But in the end if you really want to do it you’ve got to
walk up - you can’t say, “I’m going to wait here in the White
House and they’ve got to come to me,” or, “I’m the President
of the United States and boy, this is” -- and I’m not saying --
George W. Bush actually after 2002 did the exact same thing. The
country became incredibly polarized. He didn’t do enough to do
it. But in the end the president is responsible for his own
actions.

GOLDBERG: And, gentlemen --

ALTER: I agree with that. I think he should have reached
out more.

GOLDBERG: I think we can agree there is now total gridlock
and a great disgust on the part of the American people, if you
look at the polls, with where this has ended up with Congress at
10 percentage points of favorability ratings.

But when you do look at the polls for the presidential
race, this is clearly going to be a very tight race. And it
seems like people are telling pollsters that they like the
president a lot. But what does he need to do not just to be
likeable, but to be more electable?

DOWD: The interesting thing about the polls - and this has
been - we’ve seen over the course of the last six months is we
have two candidates that are unelectable running against each
other. And so if you put your hand on one side of the poll and
look at all of the dynamics of the country -- the wrong track
numbers, the economy, how he’s handling the economy, all of
those numbers -- you say, “Barack can’t win.”

Then you put your other hand on the side and it’s like,
well, Mitt Romney’s favorable rating, how much they trust him on
various personality traits, all of those sorts of -- the
perception of the Republican party, you say, “Mitt Romney can’t
win.”

And then you open the thing and, well, they’re running
against each other; somebody has to win. That’s the dynamic and
that’s why we’re in this competitive election. To me, in the
end, the voters that both sides have to get are people that
voted that Barack Obama, that like Barack Obama and his family,
like Michelle Obama and his family, but think the country’s on
the wrong track and they’re disappointed in the president’s
conduct in his office. And at some point you have to admit those
truths in front of an audience.

I think there was parts of the speeches -- some of the
speeches -- parts of Mitt Romney’s speech in Tampa, parts of
Paul Ryan’s speech in Tampa that spoke to some of that, the
disappointment, the faded Obama poster on the wall, all of those
sorts of things, which is exactly where the public is, and try
to move the country, not to dislike President Obama.

And I think Barack Obama has to figure out a way to say,
“Listen, we did some things. It wasn’t always great. Here’s
some things we tried. We tried to do a bunch of stuff. But in
the end, going forward in the next four years, if you want a
vision for the future that actually can get done and will do
what you want to do, it’s our side. And if you want to go
backward and go back and try things that have already been tried
before and haven’t worked, it’s their side.” That’s what you
have to do.

GOLDBERG: Jonathan, what do you think the president needs
to do?

ALTER: I think that’s all right, that word vision he used.
The president needs to have more of one.

DOWD: Yes.

ALTER: He needs a second-term agenda, which is not really
out there yet. And this acceptance speech on Thursday is a very
important opportunity for him to give people a sense of what a
second term would bring. And I think if he doesn’t he’s
jeopardizing his chances of being re-elected. His slogan, after
all, is “Forward.” Well, forward to what?

GOLDBERG: Well, we didn’t hear a lot --.

ALTER: And he did just --. Yes.

GOLDBERG: - from the Republicans, hardly any specifics,
really, out of the Republican convention. So you think there’s
an opportunity here?

ALTER: I do think there’s an opportunity to lay some
visionary ideas on the table. And he will do some repackaging of
things that he’s talked about in the past where he’s been
rebuffed, like investment in rebuilding the country, in
education, and what was in the American Jobs Act that the
congressional Republicans rejected, but my feeling is he needs
one or two other ideas -- maybe a national service initiative or
something to give --. Nixon had this awful line that somehow was
lodged in my brain, which was the lift of a driving dream.

You have to have something that takes -- especially because
of the disappointment that you talked about and the contrast
with 2008, he’s got to have something that lifts people’s sights
out of the muck of this campaign.

DOWD: And I totally agree with Jonathan. The interesting
thing about the history of this country, and actually the
history of the world, is if the leader doesn’t present a vision
forward, what people then do -- their appeals to the bygone era
have strong appeal. And so if you don’t have a vision forward,
“Here’s the mess we’re in and this is where we’re going. This
is the promised land. There’s the sunset. We’re going to head -
this is how we’re going to get there and this is what --”
People then basically say, “If you don’t present them that,”
and somebody turns up and says, “Hey, we can go back. We can go
backwards to that great days in the past and hearken back to
that,” it has appeal.

If you present that, going backward is not an option for
people. Without it, that’s why I think you saw a lot on the part
of the Republicans did, is it almost felt like a vision backward
to a degree. It was like the days of yore when all the things
were great and families were together and we gathered around the
campfire. And that’s sort of like, “Oh, that feels warm and
comfortable. We don’t know what’s going forward, this old days’
feel.”

And I think Jonathan is totally right. The president - the
first person in this race to present a compelling vision forward
is going to have a huge advantage.

GOLDBERG: What do you think we’re going to hear tonight
from Michelle Obama, and how is she going to play into the race
in general?

ALTER: Well, she has been a great asset all along, except
in 2010 when she just didn’t play very much, didn’t go out
nearly as much as they would have liked in the White House. But
in 2008 they called her the closer. She would come in and close
the deal. And I think that she has that role again in reminding
people why they like this president and, in a sense, helping to
inoculate him a little bit from some of these attacks.

The likability factor alone isn’t going to get somebody
elected, but it can be a powerful asset, especially when the
other candidate doesn’t score so well on likability. So she
doesn’t have to introduce her husband to the public the way Ann
Romney did, but she doesn’t have to remind them of why they like
him.

DOWD: I completely agree with Jonathan on that. And the
thing that -- she’s got a 65 percent or a 66 percent
favorability rating. She’s one of the most popular people on the
political landscape now. The interesting thing the Democrats
have, this advantage actually, is that she’s, tonight, a very
popular and I think she’s going to not do what Ann Romney did. I
think she’s going to do some of the here’s my husband, but I
think she’s actually going to, I would assume, going to do some
of the looking forward. Here’s what we’re going to do. Here’s
how we’re going to fight on your behalf. This is what we’re
going to do. I think that’s important.

But I think the other thing the Democrats have, they have
that tonight, a very popular figure and then they have the other
popular figure tomorrow night, Bill Clinton. They have two of
the most popular figures in politics that the Republicans didn’t
necessary have. Ann Romney is popular, but not as well known.
Republicans just don’t have that. And you didn’t see, obviously,
the former President Bush anywhere near the convention. I think
one, by his choice, but two, they were like, “Well, we probably
don’t really want to have George W. Bush here. But we like him,
but we’ll go see him in the back room or whatever.”

That’s a huge advantage that they have. And I would guess
every one of those speeches is going to build on up to what I
would assume was going to be Barack Obama’s vision forward on
Thursday night.

GOLDBERG: So what will we hear from Bill Clinton, do you
think?

ALTER: I think Bill Clinton is going to first try to give a
little bit of the history, some of the backward-looking stuff,
to go, “Look, we did great in the ’90s under my administration,
more than 20 million jobs were created. And then you had some
folks that came in and said the way to continue this economic
growth, the way to get a robust economy is to slash taxes and
slash regulation. And then we had some of the worst growth in
more than half a century in the first decade of the 21st
century. And their strategy of cutting taxes and cutting
regulation failed. And now they want to go back to that failed
strategy. We want to go back to my strategy, what we did in the
’90s. So join Barack Obama in bringing back the glory Clinton
days without Lewinsky.”

GOLDBERG: Do you think there’s any chance --.

DOWD: I think they have to be really careful with Bill
Clinton.

GOLDBERG: Yes.

DOWD: Because I think they can overdo this. They’ve already
used him in commercials. He’s giving a big speech tomorrow
night. I hear that he’s going to be front and center on a number
of commercials in the aftermath of the convention. They’ve got
to be careful that he can be a validator and confirm what
Jonathan says, which is, “Here’s what I saw when I was
president.” But you don’t want to get people and those
undecided voters to start thinking, “Well, that was the kind of
president. Barack Obama is not like that kind of president. He’s
never going to be like that kind of president and maybe I’m
going to try a new guy in Mitt Romney.” They’ve got to -
overusing him would be a mistake.

GOLDBERG: Do you think that he could overshadow the
president? That Bill Clinton could?

ALTER: No, I don’t. I think that Obama is a big enough
figure in his own right. He’s not a small political figure. And
this is one of the reasons why the Jimmy Carter comparisons are
kind of silly. Not just because Obama killed Bin Laden and
Carter failed with the Iranian hostages, but also because Obama
is just bigger in the culture. And Clinton is kind of rusty. He
is, to a certain extent, yesterday’s news. He’s lost a step and
I don’t think they’re in danger of having him overshadow him.

DOWD: I think one thing -- not directly related to this. I
think the interesting dynamic that this race is turning into is
Republicans are hoping this is 1980, where as soon as people
sort of -- and now they’re going to get their pass to the
conventions, which they didn’t get much bounce and didn’t get
much introduction and at the debates, that they’re going to
overcome this perception problem Mitt Romney has. And as soon as
they overcome that perception, he’ll take a lead and won’t give
it up.

Just look at what happened in 1980 with Ronald Reagan. The
race was competitive, but the dynamics of the country were in
play that they wanted to defeat the incumbent but they didn’t
necessarily trust Ronald Reagan. As soon as he overcame that,
the race was over.

The Democrats are hoping this is 2004, where the dynamics
of the country aren’t great and the president isn’t overly
popular like George W. Bush, but they so don’t want the other
guy, they so don’t trust the other guy that they maintain and
they win this race by two or three percentage points. And I
think that’s basically Democrats hope it’s 2004, Republicans
hope it’s 1980.

ALTER: Yes. The Republicans are also hoping -- I did a long
-- not that long -- a column in Bloomberg View, going through
the various analogies. And I think that’s basically right, but
the Republicans are also looking to 2004 because they had a big
base of mobilization that year, particularly in Ohio, and
they’re hoping to get that revved up again. I think they’re
beginning to realize they can’t win this thing just in the air;
they need to compete better on the ground with the president.
And so Karl Rove, who was running that campaign, is really in
charge again in this campaign.

And this is something that fascinated me. The most
important story that came out of the Tampa convention was the
Bloomberg Businessweek story about the meeting with 70 multi-
millionaires and billionaires that Karl Rove at American
Crossroads held and a Bloomberg business reporter got this
amazing scoop. She got into the meeting. That was the real
Republican convention. Everything else was kind of show. If they
win this thing, it’s going to be because they have enough money
to not just saturate the airwaves in a lot of these states, but
also by enough of a ground game to be competitive.

GOLDBERG: I was going to ask you guys about that. So on the
last day of the Republican convention, a Bloomberg reporter did
get into a closed door breakfast. She just walked in and sat
down and went into this breakfast and Karl Rove was the speaker.
And he was speaking to the party’s biggest donors, and what he
said -- their strategy -- what he said was -- against Obama --
is, “If you say he’s a socialist, they’ll go defend him. If you
call him a far out left-winger, they’ll say, ’No, no, he’s
not.’”

Rove said instead the better strategy was to remind voters
of what the president said he was going to do compared to what
he actually did do. And his quote was, “If you keep it focused
on the facts and adopt a respectful tone, then they’re going to
agree with you.”

How do you guys react to that?

DOWD: As everybody probably knows, I’ve worked with Karl
Rove in the 2000 and 2004 race. We don’t necessarily have
conversations much anymore because I had a fairly major public
break with President Bush after the re-elect. The problem with
that is -- I agree in principle with that. The problem with that
is if you could herd the cats in the room. Because what we’ve
seen is -- you’ve seen at many times a very disrespectful tone
to the president. I think the empty chair thing and that whole
deal that went on, immensely bizarre at many different levels,
but I think it’s very hard for them to keep that.

You have all these people out there saying all these things
that aren’t necessarily respectful. And if we stick to the
facts, I guess it’s somebody’s definition of the facts, I had a
huge problem with some of the things that have come out. I think
there’s many arguments you can make of why Barack Obama should
be defeated, many different arguments you can make -- where the
country is headed, the right decisions made and all that -- but
you at least ought to stick to the truth.

And some of the arguments that were made and things that
were said in Paul Ryan’s speech, I think, and to a large degree
the stuff about the GM plant -- and I know this was pointed out
-- I said this on Sunday’s show and other pointed out to me,
“Well, no, it’s factually correct. Here’s the elements that are
factually correct.” And I kept saying that’s not the
impression he tried to leave. He tried to leave the impression
that Barack Obama closed the GM plant.

And the whole thing about Simpson-Bowles and all of those
sort of elements is Karl’s right, be respectful and stick to the
facts. I think it’s very hard for them to do that.

ALTER: When Matt said --.

GOLDBERG: You get the last word, Jonathan.

ALTER: When Matt said that over the weekend this was pretty
big news, because there’s been this assumption everybody lies,
everybody on both sides has always lied, let’s be realistic. And
that is true, but there are degrees of lying. And I think the
consensus, certainly in the press corps, after the Republican
convention is that they have engaged in more than the usual
lying quotient.

We’ll see what the Democrats do. So far, in most cases they
have stuck at least a little closer to the facts.

GOLDBERG: And we will see a lot of fact-checking stories
from Bloomberg, certainly, and I’m sure the other media this
week. So that is where we are going to leave it.

***END OF TRANSCRIPT***

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